"The church may have been started around 1130 and was finished in 1150. Repeated fires make it doubtful whether the current form and expression are representative of the original form. Very little was preserved of the church after the city fire in 1702. Korskirken may be Bergen's oldest standing church. St. Mary's Church is usually referred to as the oldest. Øystein Ekroll writes that St. Mary's Church and Korskirken are of equal age. The church is located below Kong Oscars gate and north of Nedre Korskirkeallmenningen.
The church has a ground plan of an irregular, approximately equal-armed cross with a tower at the end of the western cross arm. The total length east-west is 46 meters, and the length north-south is 37 meters. The main axis is oriented fairly precisely east-west. The cross shape came about after the Reformation and the building was originally built as a long church in the Romanesque style that appeared long and narrow. The church was built on a headland in Vågen and after filling in and developing the Vågsbunnen, it is surrounded by buildings. The site is originally a beach area and the tower stands on solid rock. The cross church was built on an area where the relatively flat strip of land between the sea and the mountain was at its widest. At Skostredet (south of the church) there was a small cove of the Vågsbunnen and at Vetrlidsallmenningen /Bryggesporen there was a small bay of the Vågen at the site called Eyrar. According to the city law of 1276, Bryggen went to Eyrar. The Church of Mary and the Church of the Holy Cross had rental income from farm land in the late Middle Ages.
The German monk Antonius delivered the first Lutheran sermon in the Church of the Cross in the late 1520s, several years before the Reformation in Norway.
The building has 600 seats. The church is managed by the Church City Mission as an "open church".
Background
When the church was built, Vågen extended further inland and the shoreline at Bryggen ran 100-150 meters inside Bryggen's modern quay front. Vågen probably extended all the way to the cathedral , where the innermost part was shallow and marshy. The Korskirken was located in the early Middle Ages on a headland in Vågen and the Vågsbunnen was eventually filled in so that the shoreline was pushed outward. Bernt Lorentzen and Asbjørn Herteig envisioned a royal port facility, before the time of Olav Kyrre , approximately where the Korskirken was built. The area was sheltered and it was probably easy to pull up boats and ships. Knut Helle concluded that Bergen's first urban settlement may have been in this area and not necessarily in the north at the site of Mariakirken.
The first church buildings in Norway, probably also in Bergen, were made of wood. Bergen's first stone church was the Kristkirken on Holmen . A total of 18 stone churches were built in Bergen during the Middle Ages ; only three of these still stand (Mariakirken, Korskirken and Domkirken ). The Domkirken (formerly called Olavskirken) is 150 metres from the Korskirken. Many of the churches in Bergen were probably built in the years 1120-1180. The Nikolaikirken may have been built in the period 1120-1130 and was mentioned in connection with events in 1160. There are 33 churches known from the Middle Ages. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, several of the churches in Bergen fell into disuse, probably including the Lavrankirken, the Peterkirken, the Columbakirken (Steinkirken), the Nikolaikirken and the Mikaelkirken. In the 16th century, partly in connection with the Reformation , many churches were closed down and some demolished. At the end of the 16th century, four churches were in use in Bergen, two Norwegian and two German. The reconstruction of the New Church in 1756 was the first significant parish church built after the Middle Ages.
Hans-Emil Lidén assumes that the Church of the Cross and the Church of Mary were the city's original main churches. Both were oriented east-west according to the norm, they were built on a detached, protruding and flat area by Vågen. They had large cemeteries and other buildings and traffic were aligned with the church buildings. In comparison, the Church of Peter was small, with a small cemetery, adapted to the buildings, property boundaries and the street, and not oriented east-west. Bernt Lorentzen assumed that the city's original core area was at the Church of the Cross and grew along Øvregaten and Bryggen towards the bottom of Vågsbunnen with the Church of the Cross, while research by Narve Bjørgo and Knut Helle suggests that the city grew up at these two locations simultaneously. The role of the Church of St. Olav in this context is unclear and according to Lidén it may have originally been built as a private church; during the Reformation, the Church of St. Olav became a cathedral and parish church. The Church of St. Nicholas may also have had a role as the main church and had an official status centrally in the city at that time.
Name and origin
The name is not due to the church's architecture , but to its dedication to the Holy Cross . It was considered one of the few churches in Norway that possessed a relic of the true cross . It is first mentioned in Sverre's saga in connection with the events of 1181, when many of the Birkebeiners gathered in the city's churches, including the Cross Church; but King Sverre called for battle in Andvaka , so that they rushed against the Baglers' line out on the ramparts and chased them in their ships and out of Bergen. After this victory, the king walked through the city, pardoned all who surrendered, " and kissed all the main churches ". From the mention in Sverre's saga it appears that the Cross Church in 1181 was finished and put into use. Absalon Pederssøn Beyer claims that the Cross Church was consecrated in 1319 by Bishop Audfinn , perhaps after a major repair.
The medieval parts of the Cross Church were built of quarry stone with a facing of soapstone blocks . The walls are nearly 150 cm thick. The soapstone is similar to that used in St. Mary's Church and the Cathedral.
Parish boundaries
Bishop Audfinn confirmed in 1320 that everyone who lived on Stranden parished to the Church of the Cross, while the shoemakers at Lille Øvregate and Vågsbunnen (i.e. the area around the Church of the Cross) parished to the Church of St. Michael and the Church of Hallvard. In Vågsbunnen, Norwegians and Germans lived side by side throughout the Middle Ages, and the Church of the Cross was the parish church for the Norwegians, while the German craftsmen particularly used the Church of the Cross until 1559 when the crafts guild was dissolved. At the Reformation , the Church of St. Olav became a cathedral and received the Strandsiden and the area south of Vågsbunnen as a parish; while the Church of the Cross received the area south of Bryggen and the garrison at Bergenhus as a parish. From 1750, the Church of the Cross was given a so-called country parish in Sandviken (formerly annexed to the Hamre parish under Åsane ). In 1874, Korskirken lost its parish when Sandviken parish was established. Korskirken parish covered the east side of Bergen, from Domkirkegaten and Vågsallmenningen to Sandviken . While the German St. Maria parish after the city fire in 1702 covered the whole of Bryggen , Germans who had established themselves as Bergen merchants were included in Korskirken parish. This created tensions between Korskirken and Mariakirken.
Architecture
Middle Ages
Originally, the church was built as a simple, single-nave Romanesque building with choir and nave of the same width. Apart from the fact that St. Mary's Church in Bergen has a basilica form , there are many similarities between the two churches at opposite ends of what was probably the city's extent in the 12th century. Originally, the site was a detached promontory that jutted out slightly into Vågen , actually a moraine ridge of gravel and clay where three streams from Fløyfjellet formed a small delta called Eyrar.
After the Reformation
The "Scholeus engraving" from 1580 shows the church with two towers, but these were probably made of wood or timber-framed. The west tower in stone was erected in 1595. There are no archaeological traces of two towers. A written source from the same time mentions that the church has a tower with two spires and four gables. A document from 1593 deals with the building of a bell tower for the Church of the Cross. The year 1594 was carved into the arch of the tower portal, so the tower was probably built that year. The document from 1593 indicates that the church had a wooden tower, which did not necessarily have solid foundations that could be proven later.
Only with later fillings and shifting of the shoreline has the city's buildings surrounded the church. (The later west tower stands on solid rock .) Later it was considerably changed when it also got a portal with Christian IV's monogram . The transepts that made it a cruciform church, were added in 1615 / 1632. The building material was quarry stone with external ashlar cladding .
The fire of 1702
St. Mary's Church and the New Church escaped the fire in 1702. The Cross Church and the Cathedral were repaired after extensive damage.
Equipment
In 1738, the church invested in a new German organ , which was put into use in October. The priests of the Cross Church wrote about organist and "town musician" Johan Christian Kroepelien that "hands after time can put the more joyful Fingers and Feet to our driller's almost finished Orgelwærk".
Fires
The church burned down in three of the great fires of the Middle Ages, in 1198 , 1248 and 1476. It may also have burned in 1393 when the Vitalins set fire to the Englishmen's house, and in 1413 , when the fire started in the nearby Engelskmannsgården. After the Reformation , the church burned in 1582, 1623, 1640 and 1702. The fire in 1582 devastated the area around Vågsbunnen and along the Stranden. The repairs after the fire in 1702 cost 11,000 kroner and were paid out to churches throughout the country over the next three years. "
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